The Chic Home: Mid-century modern house in Upper Thomson

SINGAPORE – Acquiring that first landed property is a milestone for home owners like this couple, who upgraded from their Housing Board flat in Marine Parade to an inter-terraced house in Upper Thomson.

As the existing house was single-storey, they opted to demolish it and build a new two-storey home with an attic that would better meet their needs and those of their two children, aged five and three.

The Design Abode had been the interior designer for their flat, so the couple decided to engage the home-grown practice as the design consultant for the project.

Licensed architectural services such as authority compliance were undertaken by the studio’s in-house architectural arm, WKL Architects.

With construction taking up all of the clients’ $980,000 budget, The Design Abode director Toh Minghui and architect Shaunice Ten had to be prudent when it came to the design.

Mr Toh says: “It helped that the couple’s spatial requirements were not extravagant. They needed just enough rooms for the two of them, their two kids and an additional guest-cum-study.”

By arranging and stacking the rooms and bathrooms on one half of the 1,500 sq ft plot – along the length of one party wall – the architects were able to achieve structural efficiency and create 2,140 sq ft of gross floor area by keeping the walls and structural works contained within a smaller footprint.

The other half consists of open-plan spaces straddled by tiered “gardens” in the form of outdoor terraces, indoor courtyards, an atrium and voids. Within the atrium is a lightweight, prefabricated staircase from a local fabricator.

Another strategy was to maximise the outdoor spaces. Ms Ten says: “The rooms may be small, but we maximised their liveability by having every room open out to an external area – in a way, ‘borrowing’ space from the outdoors.”

On the first storey, the front patio adjacent to the living room allows for entertainment activities to spill over to the outdoors and for hosting barbecue parties. The guest bedroom has access to a rear terrace.

The master bedroom on the second storey gets a balcony where the owners can relax next to the front garden above the car porch.

In addition to an indoor playroom, the kids also have a terrace for outdoor play. The multi-purpose family room on the attic level opens out to a sizeable roof terrace for entertaining or alfresco dining.  

The architects drew inspiration from the Eames House, a self-designed home and studio in Los Angeles belonging to American industrial designers and married couple Charles and Ray Eames.

The Eames House is a popular case study that exemplifies efficient construction through the use of prefabricated materials and modular design; and embodies the simple, clean principles of mid-century modernism.

Ms Ten says: “Taking cues from the Eames House, we kept the elements honest and unembellished. We worked with whitewashed walls and structure, bare marine ply joinery, cement screed and classic ceramic and terracotta tiles.”

The Eameses pioneered plywood moulding and collaborated with American furniture company Herman Miller on many pieces, including the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, which take pride of place in the couple’s living room.    

As the owners are accustomed to open-concept living and flexible spaces, communal areas such as the kitchen have been kept open. Loose furniture keeps the spaces flexible.

The first-storey bedroom can be converted into a study, and the play area on the second storey can also become an extra bedroom.

The family moved into the home in September 2022 after an 18-month construction, which took longer than anticipated due to Covid-19 pandemic-related delays.